When Developing an eLearning Course ask these Critical Questions to Yourself

Learners are slowly migrating to different online courses instead of going with older methods. eLearning courses are gaining popularity and it’s no wonder why something like this is happening. Attending a course is convenient, you can do it from the comfort of your home, they can be applied to a whole corporation or an individual, and the numbers keep showing how effective they are. Since this means more work for employees who are creating eLearning courses, you need to invest constant efforts into improving the quality of your work, as well as its efficiency. For starters, you should give each course a proper structure before you start building it and the following questions will help you do exactly so.

Who is Your Audience?

In order to dedicate your work to someone, you need to target your audience. Sure, you can work on creating courses blindly and hope that they will hit the market. But, as businesspeople would do, you should research your market properly so you can address the popular demands.

By doing so, you will increase the chances of your courses becoming popular right away and have an actual profit from your work. Therefore, you should take a look around you and try to find out what kind of knowledge people are in need of.

Something like this isn’t secretive. If you do some browsing online, I’m sure you’ll be able to see which category of courses is most popular at the present time. Depending on current business trends in a particular area of knowledge, there’s always a targeted demand – you just need to find it.

What Type of Knowledge Need to Be Transferred?

Once you figure out the first part, and after you find a subject your course will be dealing with, it’s time to define the area of knowledge you want to pass on further. For starters, you should determine its level of difficulty.

Beginning with this will help you, as a writer, a lot. When you realize which type of knowledge you’re trying to transfer – whether it’s for beginners or professionals – you will be aware of what kind of vocabulary you need to use and which gravity of assignments is appropriate.

So now, other than having a subject you will elaborate on, you also have other directions, like the tone and a clearer picture of your audience. If you’re addressing beginners, it’s very important to ease them into the whole subject, because otherwise, they might lose their interest very fast.

On the other hand, professionals in a certain area need to be challenged, so they won’t be happy to see basic information. Naturally, the eLearning tools you use need to be updated. If you plan on addressing this target audience, make sure you’re familiar with Tin Can API – it can be very helpful when it comes to increasing efficiency.

Which Skill Are You Trying to Develop?

Not only should you be very precise about the knowledge area you’re trying to transfer to your target audience, but you also need to define your methods for skill development that you will be applying throughout your eLearning course.

You need to understand that knowledge that is not applicable in the business world won’t be appreciated. Therefore, you need to fashion your eLearning courses in such a manner that they are affecting a certain skill of your target audience. That skill, or a skillset even, needs to be developed properly through your course and a learner needs to be ready to use it afterward.

What Kinds of Content Should You Use?

Dry manuals and extensive textual content are things of the past. We live in the age of virtual reality, and although we don’t yet have cars flying around, the fact is that we can learn from diverse types of content. So, there’s text, photos, infographics, videos and audio records as the main variables you can use. Although your decision here needs to be based on your target audience, you should probably try to incorporate everything. You’re probably familiar with this – there are four types of basic learners and it’s better for the future of your business to try and address them all.

Is Your eLearning Course Engaging?

In order to get to the answer of this question, my suggestion is to ask one of your friends or colleagues to do a test run. Your results might not be satisfactory, in which case you shouldn’t be discouraged. Persistence is one of the main virtues teachers need to have, so make sure not to give up, but ask for help instead.

For starters, you should turn to exploring better tools that you can use – not all software can enable you to incorporate all types of content. You should probably know about Tin Can compliant LMS and what this software can do for you for your business. Sometimes, it isn’t you but your wrong choice of tools that is causing the problem. Once you rule out this option, you should start over again with the same subject. Try to find out whether inserting the same material in a different piece of software is making a difference. However, be sure you’re using all the options of a certain piece of software that is at your disposal for maximal effect.

Conclusion

With these five questions in mind, you will be able to create highly effective courses that your target audience will appreciate. As long as you’re critical of yourself, questioning your work and searching for new tools, you will be able to make significant progress in a very short time amount of time.

Kamy Anderson is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of corporate training and education. He is an expert in learning management system & elearning authoring tools - currently associated with ProProfs.